Nothing Else Matters
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: She was a fierce fighting, an emotionless killer when she had to be, master of many dialects, a dedicated agent and unspeakably beautiful. Oh, she was also bleeding out right before his eyes.


It was like watching a building collapse around him. It didn't matter that their target, that bastard they were supposed to kill, had just made a convenient escape, and it was of no importance to him that bystanders not too far away were screaming, ushering family out of view of the scene taking place. He didn't care to acknowledge the calls coming through the comms unit in his ear, asking why he was calling for a medical unit so urgently, asking about the target, asking who was hurt, asking damnit Barton, what the Hell's going on? He didn't register his bow falling from his hand, the heart pounding in his chest, or even an older man asking if he needed any help, assuring him that he had called an ambulance, as if an ambulance could possibly get to them fast enough. None of that mattered. Not to him, not any more.

What mattered was Natasha.

Natasha Romanoff, the master assassin who could easily best him in power and strength, though he'd put up a fair fight if he had to. He'd watched her in action through a lens scope so many times, admiring what he considered to be the strongest woman alive with not only her indestrucible training behind her, but also her past turning her into a hardened adult long before rites of passage had even seen her through to her adolescence. She was a fierce fighting, an emotionless killer when she had to be, master of many dialects, a dedicated agent and unspeakably beautiful.

Oh, she was also bleeding out right before his eyes.

He'd watched, completely imobilised with a fearful anticipation as the weapon, not her own, had exploded with a single gunshot, the movement so fluid and quick that neither of them had a chance to react to it, but things had slown down immediately after. He knew what was happening the moment he was no longer staring down the barrel of their targets gun. He wasn't going to be hit by the bullet. He wasn't going to be hurt. But Natasha was, and she didn't even flunch as the bullet embedded itself in her field suit. Her own weapon didn't drop from her hand until she looked down at her side and noticed the damage with her own eyes. The blood didn't even immediately spread through the fabric of her suit, but he could see an almost pristine hole in the material and she looked more shocked that she had taken a bullet than pain at the injury.

"Nat..." he found himself whispering, his voice touching heights of pain that he'd never reached before.

She looked up at him, eyes locking with his. They were alone now, and even in the midst of the terrified residents escaping down the stairwell of the apartment block they were unable to concentrate on anything but each other. Clint's whisper had been immediately distinguishable from the faraway cries of the civilians, as his was filled with nothing more than a heartbreaking devestation that was painful for anyone to hear. As she realised that the bullet was still lodged in her torso, the blood began to seep through the grey-blue field suit, a bright angry red that stained her front; an icy pain spreading through her too quick for her to comprehend.

She started to fall, surrendering to the will of gravity when her legs gave way beneath her, but she never felt herself hit the floor. Clint had already dropped with her, catching her in his arms before she could hit the ground, which would only have caused her more pain. She fell limp into his arms, feeling his embrace turn rigid as he did his best to stall the bleeding with one hand and hold her at the same time. Impulse took over, emergency medical training they'd all received as mandatory sessions taking over his mind just like the blood seeping over her body.

"Natasha..." he muttered, looking down at her dazed face.

She looked up at him, and he could see that she was already fighting consciousness through the pain. His heart would have fallen inside his chest but it had already dropped beyond recovery and could fall no further. If she fell unconscious he was afraid she'd never wake up again, especially with the amount of blood. It was the blood that stopped him doing what he wanted to do; the part of him that loved her wanted to hold her so tightly to him that it would be impossible for her to leave him, but the rational part of his mind, the part that was her partner and not her lover, told him that by doing these he'd cause her more pain and allowed his training to take over, pressing down on her wound and keeping as much blood in her body as possible until help arrived.

Her green eyes were round and moist, glistening with an unusual fear as she blinked rapidly. She struggled to focus on something around her, anything, until her eyes found his and he held her gaze fiercely. He gathered her more tightly in his arms, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow mindful of the would. By now, her blood was seeping through his fingertips, staining her entire front and most of his too. He thought of all the organs that could have been perforated by a bullet in that location, this amount of blood from one bullet terrifying him.

"Clint," she gasped, pain lost in her voice as it was too overcome with fear and shock.

His heart pound even louder. They'd been through so much over the years but he'd never, not once, heard her sound this afraid before. He swore at himself, unsure whether or not he'd actually said it out loud but he didn't care. He should have reacted sooner, he should have been able to do something, anything, to prevent their target making that shot, especially at her. He should never have dropped his guard. He shouldn't have allowed her to be in that much danger. That was his job, right? That was what a partner was supposed to do. He should have protected her before the shot was made.

"Oh god..." he almost whimpered, feeling a bile rise in his throat but he choked it down as he bent his wrist, bringing a hand to her cheek while cradling her head. He needed to feel her skin but didn't dare release any of the pressure he was pressing on the wound. "Nat..."

He watched as her lips rose slightly at the corners, but he couldn't meet her smile despite the emotions flooding through him. She always had a smirk on her lips when he called her 'Nat', more so than when he deliberately dragged out the syllables of her name. No one else called her that besides him. It was special like that, even though he'd never intended it to be. It was just easier to choke out when she would floor him in the training room and he was trying not to speak too much in case she really had broken his ribs in training...again.

But this wasn't the training room. He wasn't leaning over her, apologising for landing her too hard on her back even though the apology alone would see him on his own back within seconds. He wasn't cradling her head because she'd landed wrong and the medics had put him in charge of keeping her still until they were done checking her neck. He wasn't pressing his hand to her stomach to keep her pinned to the bed like those endless hotel room encounters after missions. He wasn't tracing a hand down her cheek as he was telling her those three words that she didn't want him to say but secretly adored to hear.

This was serious...wasn't it?

The medical team wasn't there yet. He knew there was one standing by but even the other team members hadn't reached him yet. He must have choked their location down the comms at some point because he could hear their voices in his ear, asking what was going on, and they must have heard the way he'd been saying Natasha's name, the pain in his voice, because he hadn't taken it out yet. He was covered up to his elbows in his partner's blood that just wouldn't stop coming...yeah, this was real bad.

Was this...going to be the end?

"It's okay, Nat, you're going to be fine, you hear me?" He was stumbling over his words as he tried to convince her. He couldn't even believe himself.

He looked over his shoulder, taking his eyes from her for just a second to collect himself. He was planning on preventing tears in his eyes from spilling over, mixing with her blood, but that was proving hard. He couldn't lose her. His eyes fell upon the figures of Stark and Rogers stumbling into the hall with shocked expressions. Their presence should have made him feel better just like their assurances that the medical team was on its way, but it didn't. The concern in their eyes was as frightening in itself as they saw the blood surrounding them. They feared the worst, and as he looked back down at Natasha, who was more disorientated than she had been only a moment before, he understood why.

They were already losing her.

"Clint..." she said, drawing his name out in a long exhale.

He shook his head, welling up again with unwanted tears at her tiny, too frail voice. "Try not to talk," he told her softly, unable to bear the possibility of losing her. His eyes were pleading with her to stop, to breath, to hold on...

"Go...stop him.." she managed to tell him, despite the pain it caused her to speak. "Stop him."

As always, she was more focused on her mission than herself. That was how she was, how she'd been trained, how she'd been raised. She'd done it since before the start of her career, and it was one of the aspects of her behaviour that hadn't altered at all since S.H.I.E.L.D had picked her up. It was in her nature. He shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere," he told her.

"Got a job to do," she trailed off, and Clint's pounding heart almost stopped altogether when her eyelids fluttered closed. However, she simply coughed wheezily, scaring him that the bullet could have clipped her lung at the angle it had entered, and resumed her pleading. "Don't let him get away."

"I'm not leaving you," he told her. "Banner will get him, I'm not leaving you."

"You have to," she told him, and damnit how could she actually smile at him when she was in this much pain? How badly was she trying to break his heart? "It's who you are...it's why I love you."

At that, the tears started spilling. He didn't whether or not he looked ridiculous, even to her. She could by dying. She knew she could by dying and she was asking him to leave her to catch one target that had slipped through. Without her, he didn't have a reason to stay with S.H.I.E.L.D anymore, and she knew that. She knew full well that she was his reason for staying. He wasn't ready to lose her yet. He needed her to stay. He needed to see those eyes, no matter how much pain they were filled with. He needed her to be alive. He couldn't lose her. Not now. Not with so much behind them and so much left to come. She told him that she loved him for crying out loud. Just a month ago she'd told him in a hotel room in Sydney that she couldn't tell him that, because it was a set of words too hard for her to say. She just told him for the first time what he'd been telling her for a year, and he was too focused on stopping the intense blood flow from her torso.

Hands were covering his. Rogers' hands. They were taking over the pressure on Natasha's wound, freeing up his own hands. Instantly, he placed one hand on her cheek, ignoring the blood smear it transferred to her skin. The other arm continued to cradle her head. Hiding things from the team didn't matter anymore. Not now. It was too late to pretend that they hadn't been sleeping together for years and emotionally involved for the last two of those. "Nat, come on, please...just stay with me," he urged her.

"It hurts," she told him in a pitiful voice that wasn't her own. "Too much...I can't..."

No. This wasn't Natasha. Natasha was strong. Natasha Romanoff. She was stronger. She was a survivor.

"Yeah, you can," he told her, fully aware that with tears on his eyes in a steady flow that he wasn't convincing anyone. There was so much blood now. He didn't know how much time she had left. The medical team wouldn't here in time and they couldn't move her. It could all be over in minutes...seconds, even...it might already be too late. There was so much. "You have to."

She gave him a pained and weak expression. "I love you."

"I know, I love you too, but you're going to be all right," he told her, horrified to recognise the goodbye she was putting into her voice. It was bad enough that his own hope was fading, let alone hers. "Please, just...stay with me, okay?"

"I'll try," she said, as strong as she could.

He started to wonder what he was asking her to hold on for. For the medical team that hadn't arrived, for a miracle? If he knew he could make it, he'd have lifted her up and carried her to a hospital. If he knew it'd work, he'd have Stark fly her off in the suit, but it'd make her bleed faster. That's why she knew it was too much to fight this. They all knew, because she wasn't going to make it through this time. She'd been fighting her whole life and now there wasn't much fight left inside her. At least, not enough to fight off death.

Clint held her fast against him, blocking out everything around them. She shouldn't have to see the looks on the others' faces. He knew that her blood was staining most of his upper body now as he could feel the warm liquid against his stomach and chest, but he didn't look down to see it. He couldn't. His eyes were trained on her face. More tears were forming, flowing over the new ones, and if he wasn't biting his lip to prevent the lump in his throat from bursting it would have engulfed him entirely.

Everyone knew that their was a risk with their jobs, that each mission could be the end. They were prepared to lay their lives on the line for a job, and that was what made them the best. They'd both lost partners in the past but no amount of training could have prepared him for this moment. This was his worst nightmare, losing her, and it was becoming a certain reality. He couldn't think. He couldn't speak. All he could do was breath, hold her, and ask her to do the same. There was even that child-like belief that as long as he was holding her she wouldn't be able to leave him. He tried to come up with another solution, anything more than the finality of Natasha bleeding out in his arms, but no matter how many ideas darted from the corners of his scrambled mind, nothing seemed logical enough to work.

Ignoring the presence of Rogers mere inches from them and Stark not far behind screaming at the medical team down the comms for not being there yet, he dipped his head, kissing her trembling lips with his own. When he pulled back he made an attempt to sweep her hair away from her face, the blood he unintentionally smeared through it blending in too well with it's natural red. Her brow furrowed every few seconds as she winced in pain from her injury and he felt his heart start to break when a soft moan escaped her mouth. She'd lost too much blood now, surely?

"Just relax," he whispered to her, touching her face with a tenderness he'd never have shown in front of his team mates. If these were her last moments, he refused for her mind to be in agony as well as her body. "Just breath...we'll get out of here, quick trip to medical...then we'll go home, watch the Godfather...talk about how awesome Michael Corleone is..."

Her eyes drooped again, and it was becoming more of a struggle to keep them open. It wouldn't be long now.

He broke off, his voice catching in his throat, and she smiled slowly. "Sounds nice," she whispered, only heard by Clint because of the volume dropping...Stark had stopped screaming at the medical team. Perhaps he knew they'd be too late now. They stared into each others eyes, fearful of looking away in case it was their last chance. In the passing moments, Clint spoke to her, assuring her that she'd be okay, his words punctuated with her whimpers and cries of pain as she went from lying in his arms to clinging to him in agony.

He couldn't lose her...not now...

He watched her grimace as a wave of pain hit her hard. Her breathing worsened and her need for breath reached a critical level with her aching chest heaving several times in a vain attempt to fill her emptying lungs. Clint watched her worriedly, telling her over and over that he loved her even though she could no longer say it back. He thought through years of field experience to search for something he could do for her, anything, but there was nothing he could do except hold her, and keep on looking into those beautiful eyes until he couldn't hold his open any longer and just had to blink.

And then it all stopped. And need for breath deserted her as her chest rose and fell for one more time. The final time. The cries stopped, the whimpers sopped, the frantic movements and the squirming stopped. Everything. Stopped.

"Nat...Natasha?" he asked, frowning.

He tried to think of another explanation for why she'd fallen to still, why Stark had started shouting again, and why Rogers was moving away, but a large lump in his throat and hot pricks in the corners of his eyes told him the simple truth. Nastasha wasn't breathing. She wasn't moving. She wasn't whimpering. She wasn't even in pain. Because she wasn't breathing.

And if she wasn't breathing, then she was...

"No...no, please, Nat..." he pleaded over her hauntingly still body. "Natasha, wake up. Come on, Nat, open your eyes...you can do it, come on, Nat..."

Natasha had stopped breathing. She was lying in his arms, not moving, not breathing. All because he'd not reacted fast enough. She was laying still now, her arms draped over her chest in the position they had fallen still in. She was deathly pale, but she didn't look...dead. She looked like she was sleeping. He leaned down and kissed her lips, clinging to the hope that she'd wake up, but her lips already were colder and unfamiliar, and they didn't warm no matter how long he lingered, unresponsive to his touch.

"Tasha..." he gasped out, his forehead pressed to hers. "Don't...don't do this...wake up..."

There were hands pulling at him, tugging her still body away from him. He fought against them, trying to keep her in his arms until Rogers was beside him, raising him to his feet with his strength and reassuring him that the medical team would take it from here. He allowed Natasha's body to be taken from him, and Rogers removed him from the spot where he'd been sitting in her blood. His back was to that horrific scene, so that he couldn't see the efforts they were taking to see if just maybe they could bring her back from this.

"Barton..." Rogers started, but what could be said, really?

"Natasha..." he whispered to himself, running a hand covered in her blood through his hair.

He went to turn, but Rogers stopped him. "They've got her, they'll take care of her."

"She-she-she stopped breathing," he stuttered as if he were processing the meaning in the beach of his mind. "She's not breathing...that mean's she's..."

"Okay, let's move," one of the medical team called out. "Pulse is barely there but if we move fast, we can keep her alive. No one touches that bullet until she's in the trauma centre."

"I'm coming," Clint said, stumbling towards them, but one of the medical team held up a hand to stop him.

"I'm sorry, Agent Barton."

"I'm coming with you," Clint insisted.

"You'll have to meet us back at base."

He shook his head, the thought of her being alive and apart from him overwhelming him. "No, I'm not leaving her," he insisted.

"Let them do their job, Barton," Stark said.

"I'm not leaving her!" he shouted, even though the medical team weren't waiting for him. They simply loaded her onto the stretcher and got her to the roof level where the helicopter was waiting for them.

Stark held tight to Clint's arm, ignoring the fact that he had just screamed in his face. "There's nothing you can do for her," he pointed out. "They'll take care of her now."

"I should have taken care of her," he argued like a petulant child.

Before Stark could make any attempt to steer him out of the building, Clint bowed his head and slid down the wall. The lump in his throat was back with a vengence, choking him, burning his insides. His own strength, which had been wavering from the second he watched her take that bullet, was disappearing completely. He tried to control his breathing but it was only a matter of seconds before his exhausted, terrified breaths turned into sobs. Once they had started, they was no way to stop them, even though he was fully aware of who he was crying in front of.

One of them raised him two his feet and blindly lead him back to the jet where they went back to the base where Natasha was in medical, and one of them must have forced him into a shower because the next thing he was fully aware of was standing beside Natasha's bed in the medical unit, and neither of them are covered in her blood anymore. They've cleaned her up considerably, and the monitor beside her is assuring him that the thready heartbeat that was there earlier was much stronger now, and this time she really was just sleeping. The blood he hadn't meant to smear through her hair had also been washed away, and when he tested her lips weren't cold anymore. She was warmer than she should be, as they'd said shock had bought on a fever, but they were monitoring for an infection and she should be just fine.

Fine. Six hours ago she'd stopped breathing. Now, six hours later, she'd be fine.

But he still felt like that building had collapsed on him.


End file.
